702 research outputs found
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Design and Beyond
No full textUpon entering Fort Lewis College, I spent previous semesters knowing I wanted to purse a career of spreading the word and planning events. Through extensive research I found my passion: graphic design.
Design is the most unique powerful form of communication worldwide. A form of communication with the ability to link or change the client and intended audiences’ perspective in the simplest way using images, words, graphics, typography, color, and styles. Together it creates the perfect.
Design also empowers people. It engages audience to a point where they want to make that change in their community. An excellent design will make someone stop in their tracks and be part of something bigger than themselves. I want to contribute. I want to change a life. I want to change my life.
Design holds a place in film, photography, drawing, building websites, and animation. Design gives me the chance to be more marketable because today, jobs in technology are skyrocketing and the more experience and skills an individual has with technology, the better off that person will be. I pursued film by obtaining the year-long Full Circle Fellowship with Sundance Institute, where I will be learning more about Production Design.
To add to my marketability, I applied my sociocultural anthropology minor to study abroad adventure in Viterbo, Italy. Living in a foreign country for a semester and immersing myself into many European cultures had a lasting impact on me, especially my views as an artist.
Graphic design is my own research that made me realize I can connect, inspire, persuade, and educate the world by breaking down problems to find the most understandable solutions. This deeper insight on the design world, current world events, and my Navajo culture led to my work over the years at San Juan Reproduction, Survival of the First Voices Festival, studying abroad, and the Sundance Institute
The 10 AM Policy and Smoke Jumping: Setting the Stage for Disaster on America’s Public Lands 1935-1988
No full textThis thesis delves into the origins of aggressive fire suppression in America and the specifics of the “10 am” policy, implemented by the United States Forest Service in 1935. It does so by piecing pieces together the events of the historically tragic Mann Gulch Fire that occurred on August 5th 1949 in Helena, Montana, with a goal of not only showing what happened, but why events unfolded as they did at the Montana fire, how the guiding policy influenced those events and how this event still effects the fire service.
Through a mixture of primary and secondary sources this project applies a micro-historical lens to Mann Gulch to show the dramatic influence of the historically aggressive “10 am” policy had on the creation of the 12 elite Smokejumpers who died there. This policy not only drastically affected the ecology of America’s public lands; it also contributed to a rise in firefighter fatalities. This thesis extrapolates an understanding of how gendered expectations with in the male dominated USFS and Smokejumping program affected the formation of this policy and the actions of the individuals on this tragic fire, and describes the eventual movement to a more accommodating fire policy after 1978. Finally it illuminates the ecological effects of such fire suppression practices and how they contributed to the catastrophic 1988 fire season at Yellowstone National Park which almost derailed the movement to inclusion of fire in management of America’s public lands
An experimental and modeled comparison of diffraction in imaging systems
No full textThe resolution limit of imaging systems is ultimately limited by diffraction. However, diffraction is often neglected in the analysis and design of both front and back illumination imaging systems in favor of the simpler ray tracing model. In many systems, paraxial optics provides a reasonable model for the design of systems with high resolution. This is certainly true for the majority of front-illuminated imaging systems; however, in back illuminated (shadowgraphic) imaging systems resolution is very strongly affected by diffraction. We present a detailed experimental comparison of imaging resolution differences between front and back illuminated imaging systems for non-scattering and scattering environments. Additionally, modeling results of both systems are compared with the experimental results and classical optical theory. Preliminary results and calculations show that physical optics creates a stronger effect on resolution in front illuminated systems in either scattering or non-scattering environments despite original predictions
The Veracity of the Historical Details in Javier Cerca’s Novel Soldados de Salamina
No full textThe Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) has left a wound in the Spanish population that has persisted to this day. Less than a decade ago the Spanish government passed the Historical Memory Law which facilitated the exhumation of fosas comunes – common gravesites in which tens of thousands of war victims were anonymously buried. Upwards of seventy novels have been written about the war, including ¡Otra maldita novela sobre la guerra civil! [Another damn novel about the civil war!]. However, Javier Cercas’s Soldados de Salamina (2001) stands above the rest. This critically acclaimed, award-winning narration focuses on the legend of the execution of Rafael Sánchez Mazas – the ideological founder of the fascist party that initiated and won the war. Unlike his forty-nine fascist counterparts who were executed by firing squad in a chaotic bout, Sánchez Mazas was able to escape unharmed and hide nearby. According to the legend, moments later Sánchez Mazas found himself staring down the barrel of a Republican soldier’s gun who, for an unknown reason, let him flee.
Cercas, a washed-up novelist and newspaper columnist who knows just as little about the Spanish Civil War as his naïve readers, narrates his investigation of the incident almost seventy years later. He consults various archives, books, and videos and conducts interviews with Sánchez Mazas’s family members and the people he met soon after surviving the execution. However, the metaliterary, or self-conscious, qualities of the novel complicate the authenticity of the historical details that it presents. Cercas narrates every aspect of his investigation, including phone calls that he misses and even his indecision on what to order from a restaurant during an interview. Moreover, these meticulous tendencies lead the reader to trust Cercas who, only pages later, admits to lying about some of the most essential details.
This presentation discusses some of the sources that Cercas consulted in order to determine how accurately and inaccurately the narrator depicts them. This project also juxtaposes the narrator’s and presenter’s conclusions about historical and literary truth and discusses how these two types of truth serve to aid the Spanish population in coping with the Civil War even eighty years after its final battle
Analysis and Interpretation of Offshore Hazards in Arctic Waters of Alaska
No full textBathymetric surveys of the seafloor in search of structures, geological or manmade, that may pose a threat to maritime navigation and the construction of pipelines and platforms for oil and gas production are conducted in arctic coastal waters of Alaska. These structures, also termed ‘hazards’, vary from shallow shoals and scours, to ship wreckage. As part of my internship with TerraSond, multibeam sonar equipment was used to determine efficient navigational routes in the Bering Strait, and the occurrence and migration of strudel scours in coastal waters of the North Slope of Alaska for a proposed pipeline route. These structures known as strudel scours form from erosional processes brought on by off-coast fluvial runoff during the yearly spring flooding on arctic sea ice which surrounds arctic deltas. Surveys conducted as long as 50 years ago (McManus, 1963) are compared and analyzed with surveys conducted in 2015 (TerraSond Ltd.) to discern the movement of a massive shoal known as the Prince of Wales Shoal in the Bering Strait. TerraSond also conducted surveys in the Beaufort Sea focusing on strudel scours, which were compared and analyzed with surveys conducted in the late 1990’s (Coastal Frontiers, 1997-1999). The bathymetric data collected by TerraSond in the Bering Strait were remarkably analogous to the bathymetric data acquired by McManus in 1960, differing by only a tenth of a fathom in most sections of the shoal within the survey area. However, the strudel scour surveys conducted in the Beaufort Sea of the North Slope of Alaska yielded different findings. Average water depth of strudel scours observed from the 2015 TerraSond surveys (1.9 m) indicate the shoaling of strudel scours in the survey area relative to data from the 1997-1999 Coastal Frontiers surveys (2.3 m). Further monitoring of strudel scours in the Beaufort Sea is crucial for efficient construction and maintenance plans for a pipeline in the region, with focus on the processes of transgression
Regulation of miR-132 Expression and Viral Entry in MRC-5 Cells via HCMV Infection and Ganciclovir Administration
No full textIt has been reported that 50-85% of U.S. adults have been infected with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) by the age of 40. HCMV can cause microcephaly in newborns and symptoms in immunocompromised patients (i.e., AIDS and organ or tissue transplants). HCMV is a double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) virus that infects primary fibroblasts, including MRC-5 cells. It gains entry into the host cell via receptor-mediated membrane fusion and displays both latent and lytic replication phases. The most common anti-HCMV drug is Ganciclovir (GC), which is a DNA-dependent DNA polymerase inhibitor.
HCMV has been demonstrated to regulate expression of host cell microRNAs (miRNAs). Host miRNAs are small non-coding RNAs typically 20-25 nucleotides in length. They regulate post-transcriptional gene silencing by directing proteins to repress translation, which leads to mRNA degradation. The host miRNA, miR-132, has been shown to downregulate interferon-beta (IFNβ) in monocytes. Moreover, miR-132 is upregulated in HCMV-infected monocytes in order to hinder IFNβ expression thereby promoting viral entry. In other words, although miR-132 is a host-encoded molecule it downregulates the host antiviral process of IFNβ production and serves as an advantageous upregulation target for HCMV.
This study investigated whether HCMV upregulates host miR-132 expression in MRC-5 cells and if the presence of GC reverses this upregulation thereby hindering viral entry. Cellular miR-132 levels and HCMV entry were monitored via RT-qPCR and flow cytometry, respectively. Although not statistically significant, HCMV-infected MRC-5 cells appeared to exhibit upregulation of miR-132 in comparison to control cells and GC demonstrated a trend towards reversing this HCMV-induced upregulation 24 hours post infection. Therefore, our results support previous data that HCMV infection increases miR-132 levels in MRC-5 cells. In addition, our results suggest that GC affects later processes in HCMV’s replication cycle in order to counteract miR-132 regulation; however, to our knowledge the mechanism by which this process occurs is not yet understood
Is Holistic Management a Suitable Strategy for the Landscape of the Western U.S.?
No full textHolistic Management (HM) is a land management decision-making platform that may be used for the restoration of degraded lands and producing a number of ecological benefits including water infiltration and carbon storage. HM consists of a complex model that incorporates economic, social, and environmental concerns into the management process. Components of the system include items such as historical landscape assessments, setting goals and adaptability. The model also includes specific management tools of fire, land rest, and managed grazing. This paper explains whether HM be a suitable model for restoring damaged lands in the western U.S.
The ecological benefits of the HM grazing technique has been called into question. Papers for both sides of the argument provided references which enabled a snowball effect of sources. The papers in opposition to HM grazing techniques propose that experiments are not repeatable, have been anecdotal, and provided very little quantitative data.
HM is a model that is appropriate for the Western U.S., but that does not mean that all components of the model will be appropriate in areas that have different histories, climates or topography. The HM grazing method is one tool in the HM toolbox and while it sometimes plays a pivotal role in rebuilding unhealthy soils, it is not always needed, and should not be used on every landscape, such as wetter soils. Also, the grazing technique should not be isolated from the model and be seen as an all-encompassing solution to degraded soils.
HM could be beneficial for degraded soils in the western U.S if goals were set for soil restoration, practiced in watershed scales, incorporated stakeholder input, and had built-in adaptation strategies. There could be a broad range of benefits from increased soil water infiltration and carbon sequestration/storage, to more productive farmland and grass-fed beef, to an easing of the tensions between ranchers and land management agencies
Convergence in Wide-Reflective Equilibrium: an indicator for objective moral truth?
No full textHow do we arrive at a set of moral beliefs that is accurate? John Rawls’s answer to this question is the method of wide-reflective equilibrium. Wide-reflective equilibrium is the process where an individual compares moral judgements about particular cases, moral principles, and moral theories to pick and choose a set that is coherent.
It is unlikely that after an individual has completed wide-reflective equilibrium that they have found an objective moral truth, as there are a multitude of different coherent ethical belief sets that are all independently valid. This makes it difficult for the individual to say that their particular belief set is the accurate one. However if it were the case that a diverse population of people started with different belief sets, went through wide-reflective equilibrium, and ended up converging on a particular belief set, then we may have a better case for saying that we have an accurate ethical belief set.
I argue that some types of convergence in wide-reflective equilibrium are evidence that we have found objective moral truth. The conjunction of convergence through wide-reflective equilibrium and the centrality of those beliefs provides some evidence that we have at least approximated a moral truth. This is because ‘central’ beliefs gain additional justification in an individual’s coherent belief set. ‘Central’ beliefs are beliefs whose denial would force the change or denial of other beliefs in a belief set. The justification provided by central beliefs is then compounded as we scale up intersubjective agreement provided by wide-reflective equilibrium. This explanation of convergence is then defended against a few plausible objections
Great Plains Farming and the Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer
No full textThe Ogallala aquifer is the largest source of groundwater in the U.S, and one of the largest in the world. It covers more than 450,000 square kilometers and spans across eight states including Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. The aquifer is situated under the Great Plains, also known as the breadbasket of the United States. Irrigation from the Ogallala supplies 20 billion U.S dollars worth of food and fiber annually. The aquifer is currently depleted every year at the water equivalent of 18 Colorado Rivers. Since this aquifer is non-renewable on a human time-scale, the vast reliance on it for feeding the world is a cause for concern and must be addressed. The land above the Ogallala aquifer has a rich history of land use from various settlers in the area. Currently, the majority of water from the Ogallala aquifer is being used for agriculture. There exists a multitude of alternative land practices that, if applied, could help to reduce depletion and use of the Ogallala aquifer. These alternatives include government programs such as the Soil Conservation Service and the Conservation Reserve Program, more efficient water usage through dry land farming and improve irrigation, and the Buffalo Commons proposal. All of these alternatives have different implications for the environment, and for the populations which live on the land above the Ogallala
Continued Studies on a New Octahedral Cobalt(III) Complex as a Possible Anti-cancer Prodrug: Synthesis and Characterization Studies in Solid-State and Solution
No full textSmall coordination complexes with redox active metal centers are of interest for their potential uses in anti-cancer research. For example, KP1019 and NAMI-A are ruthenium(III) coordination complexes that are currently in phase II clinical trials for their anti-tumor or antimetastatic properties and contain various ligands including indazole and dimethylsulfoxide, respectively. Utilizing a more abundant, less expensive cobalt metal center in place of ruthenium(III), we hypothesized that structurally similar cobalt(III) complexes could be synthesized. A new solid, isolable complex was achieved using a ligand substitution reaction via refluxing and crystallization techniques starting from the known complex trans-dichlorotetrakis(pyridine)cobalt(III) chloride. The new product is an octahedral Co(III) coordination complex that contains indazole and labile dimethylsulfoxide ligands. The proposed structure of the Co(III) complex is supported by elemental analysis and magnetic susceptibility measurements in the solid state, along with solution characterization studies of 1H and 13C NMR and mass spectrometry. This complex displays promise in utilizing a new metal center for expanding metal-containing prodrugs. Further studies are in progress to determine the exact speciation in the solid-state and in solution, as well as investigating the efficacy of this new compound on cancer cell lines